Question 4

In order to find an artist for us to create a music video for we used the website unsigned.com. By using this website it would allow us to find an artist that had not yet been signed by a record label. This would avoid copyright issues because we know that the artists on this website have yet to been discovered. We didn’t really have a genre in mind when searching for an artist we were just looking for an artist/ song that we all liked and thought that we could make a music video for. Once we found the artist and song that we wanted to create a music video for we contacted them via email asking them for permission to use their song. Below is a screenshot of the email that we sent to the artist, we explained who we were and what we were going to do. We also used Soundcloud.com to look for unsigned artists; the band that we chose and found on Unsigned.com was also on Souncloud. This website was easy to use and really helped us when finding an unsigned artist and song that we could create a music video for.

We used YouTube a lot during the research and planning stages of creating our music video. This website helped us in the early stages us to find existing artists that are of the same genre as the artist we chose. We looked at music videos to find out the conventions of the genre that we had chosen as well as conventions of music videos in general. We looked at the overall videos as well as editing techniques used, doing this helped us with our production and research as we wanted to make sure that our music video looked professional and like an actual music video.

 

I used Padlet, Moovly and Prezi throughout to display information and research that I had found. By using these website it makes my work look more neat and organised. We also used Prezi to display our ideas for our music video, this website was used to create our pitch and it made it look more interesting compared to if we had just use PowerPoint also using Prezi makes our pitch more enjoying and exciting for the people watching it.

To edit our video we decided to use premiere elements as this would make our video look more professional. This software also allowed us to use other techniques such as spilt screen and freeze frame. We edited our preliminary task using iMovie as this is simpler editing software and is quite easy to use. However it isn’t as good quality as Premiere Elements and therefore this made us want to use it over iMovie. We chose to push ourselves and use new editing software that we hadn’t used before, learning how to use completely different software but it would result in a higher quality video because it is much more complex and professional. Premiere Elements allowed us to use more effect and editing techniques which iMovie did not provide such as split screen which we used throughout our final music video. This editing software also allows you to be more precise with editing as it meant that we could make sure that the song matched lip-syncing and therefore looked professional and like he was actually singing, this software made it easier to do this. As we had to learn how to use this software from scratch it was more time consuming however this benefited us in the long run as we ended up with a good quality video. We also used this editing software as it allowed us to look at the timings and therefore helped us to get a more accurate edit as you can cut to a millisecond.

 

We also used Poll Everywhere during the planning stages; we used this website to gain audience feedback of our ancillary sketches. This website is easy to use and we have used it before therefore this wasn’t new to us. This website is easy to gather feedback and it meant that we could find out feedback quickly and easily as the website displays all feedback given. Below are the Polls that we created for our ancillary tasks.

We chose the band 3rd Rock Revolution because we liked their song 'Put on ya boots'. The genre of this band is blues, funk and rock which is a hybrid genre. I thought that by having the mixed genre it made the track more unique which is another thing that I liked about this band and their track. Also when we first listened to our chosen song we found that it wasn't a typical rock song which we liked, the song contains the rock style beat of the guitar and drums and a males vocals which sounded bluesy and also added to the uniqueness of the track. The band’s name 3rd Rock Revolution implies that they are a rock band, however they are not a stereotypical rock band as their music doesn't sound like the typical rock song. The bands image also indicates that they subvert the rock genre as they don't have the typical rock image/ look this also made us chose this band.

We found the band on Unsigned.com, after a long time searching for an artist that we felt we could create an interesting music video for. We used this website to overcome copy right issues. If we created a music video for an already existing band it would have meant that we would be copyrighting that artist as they are already signed to a record label. The issues that we could come across if we used copyrighted music are legal issues as it could mean that the music video that we created would not belong to us as we haven’t ask for permission to use the signed song and its not our song whereas choosing an unsigned artist would not leave us with these sorts of issues. We also used Soundcloud.com to find unsigned artists that we could create a music video for. After finding the band and our chose song we then needed to contact the band to ask them for permission for us to use their song to create our own music video for it. On unsigned.com the band had contact information, they had both an email and a Facebook page so therefore we decided to contact them via email however we didn’t get an email back and therefore decided to create the music video for that song anyway.

 

We also used Photoshop when creating our ancillary tasks. We used this website to edit the pictures that we took of our actor for the front of the digipak and poster. We used Photoshop to change the brightness and saturation of one of the pictures to make them look the same. By using Photoshop we were also able to create a template for our digipak and make the six panels before adding the pictures and information we wanted. This was easier for us as it allowed to create the six panels with the correct measurements using the ruler on this editing software. This website really helped us to create good quality ancillaries and meant that we could create the ideas that we had.


We also created a Vox pops during the research stage of our music video to gain feedback of what our audience wanted to see in a music video and what their favourite genre is. We asked ten people six questions about music videos to gain information that would help us with the planning and making of our final production.

We did lots of research into our chosen genre which was funk rock and used YouTube to research existing artists that are of the same genre. We didn’t find much on this genre as it isn’t very popular. However we got inspiration from Red Hot Chili Peppers’ music video for their song ‘Can’t stop’. This band is of the same genre as the one we chose and therefore we used this video to help us to come up with ideas for our music video. Another music video that we found inspirational was ‘Bittersweet symphony’ by The Verve; this music video gave us our idea for our promo.

The shots above are from the music video for ‘Bittersweet symphony’ by The Verve.

 

 

Below is a tutorial of Premiere Elements, this shows how we did the spilt screen within our music video.

 





Question 3

 
Question 3: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

The first stage that we got audience feedback on was our preliminary task, in this task we had to recreate the first minute of a known artist/ band’s music promo. Our group decided to recreate Beyoncé’s ‘ if I were a boy’. Below is our recreated version of this music video.

 

To gain audience feedback for our preliminary task we decided to get six people to take part in a focus group. We asked these people for their opinions of our prelim and asked them what they thought that we could improve on when filming our final production. The first lot of feedback that we got was about the quality of lip syncing and the editing to ensure that this was spot on with the sound track. We made sure that we edited all the shots within the first minute really well to ensure that the lip syncing was a perfect match. the next piece of feedback was that our prelim looked a lot like the actual music video apart from the use of locations/ settings and some of the props and costumes that we used for example the police uniform. You can see from the shots below the difference between our prelim and the actual video we were trying to recreate the difference in costumes however we couldn’t find anywhere that would sell a police uniform and therefore this is what we used instead.

 

 The next bit of feedback we got was of our overall preliminary task, they said that they thought that it was a very good recreation of the music video and that it was very similar and well edited. We tried to make sure that we were following the real music video very closely always looking at it to make sure that we got the correct shots and facial expressions etc.

 

 

 

 This is our Vox pops:

 

 

The first feedback we got was on our raw footage, our teacher gave us feedback on the shots that we filmed on both days that we had to film. She said that we had a good range of shots as well as a lot of shots this would help us when looking to see what shots would look better in our music video. However she did also say that some shots would probably need to be re-filmed as they were blurry and out of focus. We took this feedback on board and once we had created our rough edit for our music video we decided to re-film parts of our music video as we felt that we could get better shots that worked better the our chosen song. Our teachers also gave us feedback on our rough edit and gave us ideas that we could use in order to improve. Taking on board their feedback we then re-filmed making sure that we filmed a lot more shots and making sure that the auto focus was on to ensure that the shots weren’t blurry. The image below shows the feedback that we got from our teacher on our rough edit. From the feedback that we got for our rough edit we needed to re-film to ensure that our video was better quality.

 

 

Our teachers gave also gave us feedback on shots that they felt were good and effective within our video and that we should keep for example the graphic match shot which worked really well and was effective. They also liked the walking shots showing just Kuziva’s feet walking through different locations. Therefore we decided to keep these shots as well as add a few more of these shots to make our music video a bit more interesting.

 

 

However there were also some shots that our teachers both said that we should get rid of and re-film them. These shots were all the shots that were in the bedroom, we decided to get rid of these as they didn’t suit our song and the location wasn’t effective for our music video. We then came up with another idea to replace these shots using newspapers and a park for our location. Below are the shots from our rough edit.

 

This shot is seen during the first chorus; he is seen walking through a door from a different location then walks through the bedroom door. This isn’t an effective shot, however we originally thought that this was a good idea as it linked to the first line of the chorus ‘be careful what you dream of’. We decided to scrap this idea and instead made each chorus have different shots as in our rough edit we were actually going to use the same footage twice for the chorus at the start that repeats. Comparing this shot to the ones that we actually used in our final production there is a big difference of quality and how is suits our music video.

 



The shot above is from our final music video, this shot is used during the chorus, we have used freeze frames and split screen to make this more interesting. We made sure that when re-filming that we were always looking back at our teachers comments. They said to keep the use of spilt screen and maybe use it a little more, this shot shows that we have focused on this element and used it correctly and effectively. This shot shows each panel one by one while the rest stay on freeze frame, we have timed each section to be played during a certain line within the chorus. This is one element that we used for the first chorus we then had different shots for the second chorus and the third however we used spilt screen for one of the last chorus. These shots are of better quality and actually show that we have used the newspapers as transitions which I feel is a good element within our music video as well as the use of split screen.

Comparing the rough edit to our final music video you can see that we have taken on board the feedback that we got from our teachers. After the re-film our teachers thought that our footage was a lot better quality as did we. There is a huge difference between the two videos and you can see that we have also taken on board comments from our vox pops about improvements that could be made.

Once we finished our music video we got a comment on our video on YouTube as we put it on here to find out what people thought about our music video. We got some positive feedback from putting our music video onto YouTube. From getting this feedback we were very happy as the first sentence said was that they really liked our video. They then go on to say how they enjoyed the cutting to the beat and that it worked out really well. They went on to say that our costume choices were good and that they thought that our editing was good. They then finished with saying our lip syncing was good, which suggests that we chose the right actor to be in our music video. This feedback made us feel happy with our final production and also told us that our product was actually quite good.

Question 1

 

 

We used many different locations throughout our music promo; the locations we used were a field, a park/ bench, a house, Peterborough town centre and Bourne. By using all these locations it makes our music promo look more interesting. The shot below is from our music video and shows the park in Bourne that we used for part of our promo. Originally we didn’t use this location as we were going to film everything in Peterborough, the field and a house. However when we re-filmed we ended up using this location as we thought that it worked well and it was easy for us to get to, to be able to film as this is in Bourne which is where we all live. This is not a typical location of a funk rock music video as most music videos of this genre for example ‘Can’t stop’ by Red Hot Chili Peppers is filmed in an empty building/ rooms. Therefore this shows that we have subverted and challenged the conventions of a typical music video of our genre.

 

Although this is a different location this is across from the park that we filmed at. This location is still in Bourne but is not a typical location that is used in the funk rock genre. You can see in the shot below from our music video that Kuziva is sat on a wall holding a newspaper and sat next to a radio and behind him is a car park. This shot worked well and suited our music video; we used the newspaper as a transition throughout to make it look different. We wanted to make our music video different and we thought that by using locations that weren’t typically used in this genre it would make our music video stand out and look different. Therefore this also shows that we have subverted and challenged the conventions of a typical music video of our genre.

 

The next location that we used was the studio at school; this could be typically used in funk rock promos however not as much as performance and disjuncture. We chose this location to be in our music video as the lyrics ‘at the studio’ link to this location. However if we were going to do this shot again we probably would have seen Kuziva in the actual recording studio singing into the mic. But as this was at school there was lessons going to on in the room at that point. This shot isn’t as good as others however we have still managed to use it successfully with the transitions that we used with the newspaper. Therefore this also shows that we have subverted and challenged the conventions of a typical music video of our genre.

 

 

A good example of this is the music video for ‘You don’t own me’ by Grace, the studio is a key image which is used throughout the music video

 

 

The next location that we have used in our music video is the house; we used this location at the start of our music video to show Kuziva putting his boots on. We have done this as this link is to the whole song as the main lyrics in the song are ‘put on ya boots’. This creates a clear link between the lyrics of the song and our music video. This is not a typical location that is used in the funk rock genre however we thought that this was suitable for our music video and it linked to our song in a way. This shows that we have challenged the conventions of a funk rock music video.

 

 

The next location that we used in our music video is the field we thought that having by having lots of locations throughout the video and the fact that Kuziva is continuously walking makes it feel more like a journey travelling through different locations. This creates a link with the song as the song is kind of about a journey as such we know this from the lyrics ‘Put on ya boots and keep on walking’ this is a literal meaning. We have based our music video around the song and the lyrical content. This shot below is an extreme long shot showing Kuziva getting further and further away walking into the distance which supports and links to the lyrics. We have challenged conventions and the use of location as this location is not typical of the funk rock genre.

 

Another location that we used is Peterborough train station, this shot links to the lyrics ‘on a train heading for outward bounds’. I feel that this is a good shot; it is a medium shot/ long shot which shows the train leaving the station. We have chosen to use this location because it links to the song and we thought that this would be an effective shot to use in our music video which it was. However this location is not of the funk rock genre and therefore shows that we have challenged the conventions of the genre to make an interesting music video.

 

The last location that we used was Peterborough town centre; this also links to the lyrical content within our chosen song. We decided to use this location because we felt that it was suitable for our music video and it supports the link to the lyric ‘centre’. This also supports that our music video adheres to Andrew Goodwin’s theory and follows the illustration. We have used illustration throughout our music video as Kuziva is miming to the lyrics, for example when the lyrics ‘papers talk about with the radio Kuziva is singing these lyrics holding a newspaper sat next to a radio.

 

 

 

Question 2

As the three are part of a promotional package for an album release they need to work together to ensure that the artist is promoted correctly and that they represent the artist. 

 

For the digipak we create six panels showing two images of the main singer in the top two pictures and had the CD in the middle panel of the top row. These images used also link to our music video as these are the costumes used within the music video. The shots below are from our music video which shows the costumes that we have used throughout. Creating this link is important as it helps the audience to recognise and link the three promotional materials together. It also enables the audience to relate the music video to the digipak.

 

 

To make it look more like a newspaper we added fake articles in the corner of the image to link it to the theme. We then added an article behind the CD and changed the opacity so that it wasn’t seen as clearly as this helped to make sure that the CD stood out. On the bottom row we added the lyrics of the song and information about the band such as names etc. we have also added the fake articles here as well as to ensure that we are creating the synergetic link. We have used a newspaper as a transition mainly at the start of our music video and therefore by using this in the digipak it allows the audience to link all three promotional materials together which promotes the artist.

As a digipak alone we thought that this was effective and helped to promote the artist however this put with the other two promotional materials made it more effective as it ties in with the idea of the newspaper and creates the synergetic link between the three promotional materials.

For the magazine advert we created a mock-up of a newspaper front cover, this magazine advert would also contain conventions of a normal poster with the conventions supporting the newspaper idea. The conventions of a newspaper that we will be using are the main header (name of the newspaper), a main headline which will be replaced for the name of the band ‘3rd Rock Revolution’, a sub-headline which we will replace with the name of the song ‘Put on ya boots’ and the main image which will be of the main singer split in half wearing different costumes. This links to our music promo as these costumes are worn throughout therefore this proves we have created the synergetic link. Mock-up articles are also used on the left and right of the main image to create the sense of the newspaper and make it look more realistic. As a poster we thought that this was effective and helped to promote the artist however this put with the other two promotional materials made it more effective as it ties in with the idea of the newspaper and creates the synergetic link between the three promotional materials.

 

Music promo:

There are two different types of media, traditional and new media. Traditional media is anything that promotes the artist that doesn’t use the internet for example music channels shown on TV. The advantages of traditional media are that there are lots of different music channels such as MTV, NME, Kerrang these music channels use synergy as NME and Kerrang are also magazines. Another advantage is that it targets a mass audience. An example of traditional media is ‘Top of the Pops’ most people watched this however new media has taken over and therefore not many people watch music channels anymore as you can find music videos online easier this is a disadvantage. Other disadvantages of traditional media are that it is not as popular now and music videos aren’t really watched anymore as most people just listen to music. Whereas new media uses the internet to promote the artist so instead of showing the music video on the TV music videos are found online on a website such as YouTube. The advantages of new media are that it is easier to find music videos online and you can actually choose songs that you want to listen to unlike if you were watching music video on the TV it would mean that you would have no choice what songs are played and therefore would have to listen to songs you may not like. Another advantage is that it is on high demand as music videos which are on YouTube can be accessed easily as well as on a range of devices this is known as convergence. This type of media is suitable for niche audiences and is a cheap method to use as there are no distribution costs. New media also uses digitisation and visual advertising which means that everything has been converted to digital for example music videos on TV and YouTube which use visuals to promote the artist. However the disadvantages are that you need access to the internet to go onto YouTube. It also costs the audience money to buy music from iTunes but this can be downloaded quickly and from home which means that you don’t have to go buy the CD for one track that you want. We have used new media as we have put our music video on YouTube as this is easy to do and we don’t have to pay to do this whereas we would have to if we wanted it on the TV.

Magazine advert:

Traditional media includes an actual poster which has been put up to promote the band; this poster will also be seen in magazines. Whereas new media would be taking a digital copy of the poster and putting it on the internet for example on social media or the artists website. With posters the first thing that we think of is magazines and most importantly music magazines this is a good form of media and there are many different genres of music magazines such as Kerrang and NME. There are music magazines for each genre of music this allows the audiences to choose the magazines that they want to read and the genre of music that they are more interested in for example someone who likes rock more than pop will choose a rock magazine rather than pop. We have chosen to put our magazine poster on the internet probably on social media as this targets a mess audience which would mean that the artist would be promoted as lots of people would see it as social media sites such as Facebook are very popular. From looking at both traditional and new media we can see that either way a mass audience will get to see the poster, but when it comes to cost the poster in a magazine would be more costly than putting the poster on a social media site, so therefore the media I would choose to promote the poster would be the ‘new’ media.

 

Digipak:

Traditional media includes record shops such as HMV which make sure that the new CD’s are used on point of sale to grab the buyer’s attention straight away once they walk in. Digipaks were known as limited edition or collectable. New media is a digital copy of the digipak and is put onto the artist’s website, however they aren’t really made anymore but using the internet means that it is cheaper as there aren’t any distribution costs. When it comes to traditional media for CD Digi-packs the first thing we think of is a physical copy that can be found in music shops such as HMV.

So when it comes to choosing between traditional and new media to promote all three promotional materials it is clear that new media would be better to promote the artist and what I would choose to use as new media allows you to be closer to the artist for example Twitter allows you to communicate with artists and follow them to keep up to date with their latest songs/ albums.